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 Omegus wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
And half the SM will be turn to chaos as well. weeeeeeeeeeeee equality!

It required the direct intervention of the Chaos Gods themselves to manage that feat.

And want to know something else?

Far more normal mortals turned heretic during the Horus Heresy than Space Marines.

Magnus attacked the Fang with two million of the Spireguard he whisked away from Prospero during the Heresy.

That's more than the fighting force of all the Legions combined.

At first, the majority of the Astartes that turned were simply following their commanders, some of whom they have lived with and heard legends about literally their entire lives. You have to remember that it wasn't the full Legions that rebelled, since Horus had to purge a significant number of loyalists from his ranks. The other traitor Primarchs did the same; even gentle Lorgar had every Terra-born battle brother slaughtered. So yes, the traitor rate among the Crusade-era Space Marines isn't as high as implied and is in some way understandable.

Which leads to an interesting question regarding the numbers game. How the feth did the CSM fight the SM after purging half of their own ranks.

Well the Drop Site Massacre certainly helped. It was an almost perfect ambush.

 Shlazaor wrote:

Which leads to an interesting question regarding the numbers game. How the feth did the CSM fight the SM after purging half of their own ranks.

That's what I have been wondering to.
How the hell did they survived as Legions when they suffered heavy losses then and there?
Especially World Eaters, they fought in civil war after they were defeated and then they scattered as warbands.

For the most part, they didn't survive as legions. Only three can really be called true legions-- death guard, thousand sons, and the word bearers.

The rest are mostly scattered in to warbands, IIRC.

Thanks, however I am still amazed how they still exists, all of them suffered losses and nowhere did I read how they train/recruit new marines ( except for the Black Legion that accepts anyone ).
I understand for Thousand Sons ( automatons, just assemble after they die ) but how did the likes of Emperor's Children, World Eaters, Death Guard etc... replenish their Marines that fall in battle?

It varies, really. You'd want to ask a spikey marine fan on that, my care level with them isn't anywhere NEAR enough to get that detailed in their lore. In fact, I'm surprised I know anything other than their names at times.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:
Thanks, however I am still amazed how they still exists, all of them suffered losses and nowhere did I read how they train/recruit new marines ( except for the Black Legion that accepts anyone ).
I understand for Thousand Sons ( automatons, just assemble after they die ) but how did the likes of Emperor's Children, World Eaters, Death Guard etc... replenish their Marines that fall in battle?

Most of them recruit new recruits just like loyalist marines do. They find compatable male preteens and they under go the process.

Obviously some warp thingies are involved.


Other methods exist, such as one which involves putting captured candidates in these mutated womb things that rapidly turn the recruit into a marine. Although the failure rate is high, and those that fail come out horribly mutated things of flesh. But it does give new marines at a high rate.

Plus there are the various former loyalist marines that have turned traitor over the millenia.

 Brother Captain Alexander wrote:
Thanks, however I am still amazed how they still exists, all of them suffered losses and nowhere did I read how they train/recruit new marines ( except for the Black Legion that accepts anyone ).
I understand for Thousand Sons ( automatons, just assemble after they die ) but how did the likes of Emperor's Children, World Eaters, Death Guard etc... replenish their Marines that fall in battle?

One of the largest sources of new chaos marines are existing marines that turn traitor. Although you wouldn't realize it from the game-play, but depending on which lore you source, one marine should be the equivalent of between 100 and 1000 normal humans with military training, perhaps even higher. For most Chaos Space Marines, this value should be somewhat higher, so from a practical standpoint they need significantly fewer new recruits than loyalist legions, because their losses are fewer and less frequent. However, various renegade factions do have their own recruiting methods. The Iron Warrirors, for example, have been known to use a variant of a daemon engine called a Daemonculba which can turn (in theory) nearly any adult human male into a Chaos Marine, completely erased of their old self, although the failure rate is extremely high. It is also suggested that some of the more prominent traitor war-bands (such as the Black Legion and the Red Corsairs) are able to raise new recruits much in the same way as their loyalist brothers.

Just roll with it and enjoy the background.

RegalPhantom wrote:
Although you wouldn't realize it from the game-play, but depending on which lore you source, one marine should be the equivalent of between 100 and 1000 normal humans with military training, perhaps even higher.

Unfortunately, this quote works if not taken the literal way, but is usually taken the literal way, even by studio writers. The intent of the quote "Give me 100 Space Marines or, failing that, give me 1000 other troops." does work in that applying 100 Space Marines, with all their equipment and training, could accomplish the same objective that 1000 grunts could acheive. It doesn't mean if they stand their ground against a bum rush of 1000 grunts that they will survive. Apply a smaller number of special forces, inserted into the combat zone in a direct way (like via Drop Pod), at the heart of the foe, could accomplish that objective where 1000 grunts would not.

This is a bit non sequitur but I feel the idea of beakies is ridiculous for the following reason:

Could a space marine survive an airplane falling on top of him? I think not. There are only 1M space marines in the universe, orks have far more than 1M planes, ergo I do not see how such a force could exist.

If you don't like that argument think of any other suitable BFG that exists in the known universe in the year 40,000 (or so), there are just too darn many of them for ONLY 1M guys to stand up to. I know that they are not used at once but the shear numbers of horribly killy objects in the universe that could utterly crush a beakie is just laughable. I'd buy it if there were something on the order of like 1 trillion of 'em but c'mon, a force THAT small doesn't really even make a dent on protecting the galaxy! If I recall, there was some quote about how there are barely even enough of them to have 1 per Imperial planet!


I'd think that they would serve more as tactical advisers and sort of "black opts" for the Imperium, a *Single* tactical squad would show up only for missions that require extreme precision. If your total force is only 1000 strong there is on way you are going to risk even 10% of it at any given time, even sending 10 guys out is a risk! It would seem to me that they would probably show up for moral support and to guide battles rather than to drop down and take the full brunt of a horde army assault.

Indeed - it seems to me that if you can't afford to lose fewer men than the enemy lost in tanks something is wrong.

These topics pop up pretty regularly, and my response is always the same. Why use a swat team or a special forces team if you have an army of tanks and jets waitin? Sometimea you need to use a scalpel instead of a hammer. Both have their uses, and their seperate roles.

Space marines on the tabble do not accurately represent the power of space marines in the fluff. Yes there is the 10 to 1 ratio put out as a quote by Dorn. But also, there are nothing but stories of space marine taskforces (60-100 marines plus some equipment) liberating planets that had guardsmen losses in the MILLIONS. If you read the stories, more than just the bottom of the page quotes and the rules (remember. fluff does not dictate rules, except for those few instances where fluff dictates rules), You will find that space marines are probably, in terms of sheer output of enemy dead per marine, worth about 25-100 guardsmen. Also, the average scout may take a decade or two to become a tactical (or devastator depending on chapter traditions), but during that whole time, they are serving as infiltrators, commandos and behind the enemy line fighting specialists. It would be like joining the military, and then going to bootcamp in the jungles of vietnam wih a knife and a shotgun, and maybe in 5-10 years you'll be allowed to graduate. when guardsmen train, its in schools and camps. when marines train, theyre actively killing hundreds at a time.

Space Marines in the fluff do not accurately represent the power of Space Marines in the fluff, either.

It changes wildly form "one unaugmented human can deal with a space marine with contemptuous ease" to "a single space marine took down a thousand dark eldar" or some other ludicrously stupid nonsense.

 Melissia wrote:
For the most part, they didn't survive as legions. Only three can really be called true legions-- death guard, thousand sons, and the word bearers.

The rest are mostly scattered in to warbands, IIRC.

Actually, the Death Guard has splintered to a degree as well, with Typhus leading probably the largest sub-faction that doesn't just sit around on Mortarion's plague-world. Likewise the Thousand Sons, with Ahriman leading a large distinct splinter force. They're just the "least splintered", though I'd also throw the Iron Warriors into that category as well, generally broken up into Grand Companies that are the size of loyalist chapters or larger.

 AtariAssasin wrote:
These topics pop up pretty regularly, and my response is always the same. Why use a swat team or a special forces team if you have an army of tanks and jets waitin? Sometimea you need to use a scalpel instead of a hammer. Both have their uses, and their seperate roles.

The issue is, when it comes to the Space Marines, is that it'd be no different than having one single SAS or SEAL guy, that takes the resources of an entire US Navy carrier battlegroup to maintain, for all of NATO, the former Warsaw Pact nations, China, and Japan combined, Army/Navy and Air force for all. That's literally how rare Space Marines are in relation to greater Imperial forces.

That's the problem, the sheer scale of their rarity is mind-boggling. They just don't work at that level.

 OlGreye wrote:
Space marines on the tabble do not accurately represent the power of space marines in the fluff. Yes there is the 10 to 1 ratio put out as a quote by Dorn. But also, there are nothing but stories of space marine taskforces (60-100 marines plus some equipment) liberating planets that had guardsmen losses in the MILLIONS. If you read the stories, more than just the bottom of the page quotes and the rules (remember. fluff does not dictate rules, except for those few instances where fluff dictates rules), You will find that space marines are probably, in terms of sheer output of enemy dead per marine, worth about 25-100 guardsmen. Also, the average scout may take a decade or two to become a tactical (or devastator depending on chapter traditions), but during that whole time, they are serving as infiltrators, commandos and behind the enemy line fighting specialists. It would be like joining the military, and then going to bootcamp in the jungles of vietnam wih a knife and a shotgun, and maybe in 5-10 years you'll be allowed to graduate. when guardsmen train, its in schools and camps. when marines train, theyre actively killing hundreds at a time.

Hrm, much of this is rather over-exaggerated. A lot of this is also very author dependent, where SM's range from big guardsmen that die to heavy bolter fire and guardsmen-fired mortars all the way to demigods that butcher through thousands of eldar with but a single tac squad, and it's not like the IG dont' also have their similar equivalents (oh no, unrelenting wars of attrition, one "super" regiment/commander shows up after millions of deaths and wins with nary a scratch!).


The issue with SM's training like that is that attrition would have killed them all long ago. At that rate, it'd take the Dark Angels centuries to recover from their few days on Vraks, any more fights like that and they'd be dead in weeks.

And that's why SM's don't really work. They serve to be the narrative focus for a fictional fantasy universe set in space instead of a world of yore, but functionality past that point breaks down rapidly.

Another thing to remember is that for the most part, space marines are built to SURVIVE. these dudes have 23 extra organs and like 19 of them are in order to keep them alive. for example, instantaneous scartissue over wounds, bulletproof bones, and overly redundant organ systems. Another thing to remember is that spa e marines on the whole normally win. most of their engagements arent large scale, high casualty, attrition affairs, but instead, the chapter master sends less than 10% of his marines in , and they kill everything, usually with very few casualties. if you look at the fluff, chapters thast take huge losses generally dont bounce back, or are limited to ridiculously small-scale operations for hundreds of years. as an example, see the Crimson Fists.

 OlGreye wrote:
Another thing to remember is that for the most part, space marines are built to SURVIVE. these dudes have 23 extra organs and like 19 of them are in order to keep them alive. for example, instantaneous scartissue over wounds, bulletproof bones, and overly redundant organ systems.

And that'll help some things, but not others. An autocannon penetrating the armor is going to turn that marine to jelly, a battlecannon will turn an entire squad to small bits, and a bombing run scattering a dozen 500lb bombs will turn a company into a squad.

And we have lots of battle descriptions talking about marines talking significant casualties, even just 5% casualties would translate to chapters being able to fight only a few years at a time every few decades as they rebuild.

Another thing to remember is that spa e marines on the whole normally win.

We don't know that actually, they only mostly win in the individual extracts given to us, unlike the IG where it's plainly stated that they ulitmately win almost all of their wars. Even if they do, casualties are generally taken, and they take a loooooong time to recover.

most of their engagements arent large scale, high casualty, attrition affairs, but instead, the chapter master sends less than 10% of his marines in , and they kill everything, usually with very few casualties.

Again, even losing 5 dudes out of a Company, assuming 4 such engagements every year, after 3 years those 100 marines are down to 40, and usually at 50-60% strength is when military units are typically considered "broken" and either lack enough generalists to cover their bases and they break or specialists have to assume generalist tasks and the formation loses it's effectiveness. At that rate, after 3 years, they'll almost certainly be taking more casualties than they did at year 1 because they can't cover as many bases, and likely can't even cover the same sorts of operations. Then it'll take decades to recruit and train replacements.

Thus, after a couple of years of service, you're down for decades as you generate replacements. Not the most efficient of organizations...

if you look at the fluff, chapters thast take huge losses generally dont bounce back, or are limited to ridiculously small-scale operations for hundreds of years. as an example, see the Crimson Fists.

Only when they take catastrophic losses will GW usually decide that a chapter will die, they seem to turn Traitor at a greater rate

The casualties the DA's alone took on Vraks realistically should take them centuries to recover in what was a relatively common SM operation, but they seem fine again just a couple years later.

Most of what makes the SM's work is simply the "say-so" of the author writing about them.

Actually I may see a potential issue with your analysis but I'm not a major SM lore buff so let's see who agrees. Essentially you are ruling out the reservist element. Your interpretation seems to assume that when X marine dies Y individual begins his training to become a SM. But that's not inherently true. In fact when X space marine dies, there may be a hundred Y's that are nearly ready to become full fledged SM. As long as SM have a large pool of reserves ready to replace their ranks then their usual operations of high gain and low attrition operations suddenly are more meaningful. Especially when weighed against forces that would take a lot more time/cost/risk to succeed in the form of the IG. The lore tends to paint the SM as gods but without too much forced reinterpretation I still think they can be persuasively argued to fill a niche and critical role in the IoM warmachine.

Another thing to remember is plot armor. Marines have plot armor 10 miles thick. even those that aren't Matt Ward's favorites, unless its the Soul Drinkers. Also, marines are constantly at war in the sense that they, over the course of 10000 years have fought in thousands of conflicts. but warp travel being what it is, they spend a lot of time in transit, and they also must realistically spend a good amount of downtime, considering the whole building of chapels and fortress monasterys, and then building and maintaining their own weapons (this is especially true of the salamanders). Then all that praying and venerating the fallen, A marine may only actually fight in a few battles over the course of a decade, and only one or two of them involve large scale marine company commitments. Some chapters are listed as having gone over 300 years since fighting as a whole. in that time they could easily raise companies of scouts, which as is hinted at, some chapters do maintain extra scout and reserve companies, putting their numbers well over a thousand, and more towards 1200-1300, with only the top 5 companies of most chapters actually participating directly in combat. Then consider that the first compay rarely fields more than 5-10 guys in any conflict. that means that for any given chapter, 405-410 marines are doing the bulk of the fighting, with a feeder program of 600-800 marines replacing casualties, and usually a subsector of space providing equipment and raw recruits.

Alpha Legion is the less splintered, IIRC
Or the most..

 Shlazaor wrote:
Actually I may see a potential issue with your analysis but I'm not a major SM lore buff so let's see who agrees. Essentially you are ruling out the reservist element. Your interpretation seems to assume that when X marine dies Y individual begins his training to become a SM. But that's not inherently true. In fact when X space marine dies, there may be a hundred Y's that are nearly ready to become full fledged SM. As long as SM have a large pool of reserves ready to replace their ranks then their usual operations of high gain and low attrition operations suddenly are more meaningful. Especially when weighed against forces that would take a lot more time/cost/risk to succeed in the form of the IG. The lore tends to paint the SM as gods but without too much forced reinterpretation I still think they can be persuasively argued to fill a niche and critical role in the IoM warmachine.

We have all sorts of fluff that shows SM's recruit very slowly, like the BA's returning once every 10 years to Baal and the like, and it doesn't make much sense that they'd take decades to train and each marine typically lives for decades or centuries with tons of dudes waiting in the wings to hop in, that whole thing only works if marines die very quickly at high rates after achieving marine status, which would contrast with the whole thing of marines serving for decades.

 OlGreye wrote:
Another thing to remember is plot armor. Marines have plot armor 10 miles thick.

Yes, which is what makes them work primarily.

A marine may only actually fight in a few battles over the course of a decade, and only one or two of them involve large scale marine company commitments.

Which was kinda my point, and in which case, if you've only got a million marines over a galaxy, they're not really seemingly going to be responding to conflicts much more than the Guard is, and thus their point as a "rapid reaction" force is moot.

Some chapters are listed as having gone over 300 years since fighting as a whole.

And at that point, back to the OP's question, what's their point? if you have a military formation that's given its own fiefdom and uses huge amounts of resources and doesn't fight for 300 years...it shouldn't exist.

in that time they could easily raise companies of scouts, which as is hinted at, some chapters do maintain extra scout and reserve companies, putting their numbers well over a thousand, and more towards 1200-1300, with only the top 5 companies of most chapters actually participating directly in combat.

Again, even then, they'd likely still be unable to sustain casualties without going such long periods of time without fighting that the point of their existence is questionable.

Then consider that the first compay rarely fields more than 5-10 guys in any conflict. that means that for any given chapter, 405-410 marines are doing the bulk of the fighting, with a feeder program of 600-800 marines replacing casualties, and usually a subsector of space providing equipment and raw recruits.

And that's an astronomical amount of resources to sustain couple hundred dudes that fight a few times a decade, that could instead be used to raise dozens if not hundreds of IG regiments and numerous IN formations that would be in active service and mitigate if not negate the need for a "reaction" force like the SM's, again leading us back to the point of either they're not really the rapid reaction force they're supposed to be and thus pointless, or they're going to take so many casualties as to be extinct relatively quickly on a 40k scale.

Edit: I've been wanting to chip in for a while now. Here looks like a good spot.


I only see two ways space marines could logically exist:

A) They are all that and a bag of chips, able to capture planets, mow down thousands of enemies single-handily and what-have-you. Therefore, they'd perhaps be "worth it." In this case, there isn't much point to space marines Sure, they'd kick ass, but that's uninteresting.

B) Space marines are just the end result of the Impirium's backwards culture. Even though not cost-efficient, space marine chapters are maintained for the same reasons as anything in the imperium: fear and ignorance. The fact that space marines are hailed as all-conquering champions just further displays the Impirium's preference towards ignorance and tradition to progress and education. In this case, The point of space marines is to take what is honorable, just, fair, knightly, and courageous, and throw it in the face of the grim-darkness, illustrating how little those values contribute to the survival of humankind in the 41st millennium.


In my opinion, the latter option is by far the most interesting, and is the one I prefer the most, as it offers more good stuff thematically as far as I'm concerened.
That said, I doubt many fluffy books (or GW, sadly) support option B.

 Vaktathi wrote:
And that'll help some things, but not others. An autocannon penetrating the armor is going to turn that marine to jelly, a battlecannon will turn an entire squad to small bits, and a bombing run scattering a dozen 500lb bombs will turn a company into a squad.

I'm not so sure about this. The autocannon, maybe (depends on how the round penetrates). A single battlecannon shot probably won't hit much of a squad since they're unlikely to be bunched together, and a the same with the bombing run. In the Grey Knights Codex, their armour helps protect them from an orbital bombardment dropped around them which takes out a large number of Daemons and Tyranids. I think the idea may be that they're almost immune to shrapnel, and as such a lot of the time only direct hits will kill them (although in that same Codex a company is wiped out accidently by another bombardment, so there you go).

The problem there is that many, if not most, SM chapters do not fit the "honorable, just, fair, knightly" label, and in many ways are supposed to be the king of Grimdark

They're genetically engineered, psycho-indoctrinated, nearly omnicidal super soldiers running around ostensibly in the service of a bueraeucratically strangled omnipresent military theocracy but really just killing wherever and whenever they feel like according to their own self imposed rules and whims, typically covered in markings of death and war such as skulls, blades, and markings very reminiscent of WW2 Reichsadlers or of medieval inquisitorial trappings.

I mean...you meet this guy and I'm not exactly seeing honorable, just, fair, or knightly, here In almost any other setting, the Space Marines make the bad guys look like school yard bully's at best. The only reason the SM's seem like good guys is because you put them next to bad guys that are the literal incarnation of hell made flesh

I know the fluff varies - as it should, there is no hard and fast rule in 40k - but the video game SM is a fairly good representation of the worth of a SM. There may be those who don't like it, but some SM's are truly capable of feats normal humans by the thousands simply cannot do. War itself is fairly unpredictable, a SM could last through the slaughter of millions, or he could be the first decapitated by a stray bolter round. Overall however, the simple fact that the SM's were instrumental in bringing about the IoM - moreso due to the fact that the Emperor needed them to unite Earth and the Sol system- it seems heretical on so many levels to question why the SM's wouldn't be needed to defend it after 10,000 years.

Therefore, I firmly believe that SM's cannot exist without the rest of the IoM, and the IoM cannot exist without the SM's.

@ ENOZONE: I think they easily could.They already hold their own against orks/tyranids/tau and the many other big bads, what difference does a million more dudes in power make?


@ Vaktathi:

Well, the asthetics may differ, but I was going from what I've heard about Codex: Space Marines, the generic marine codex, although I haven't read it myself and could be misinformed. Yes, there are chapters which are crazy/vengeful/insane, but an ultramarine did spare a tau planet out of a sense of honor, if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, they are the most knightly thing around. Sure, the named chapters that get the codexes are different, but they represent individual chapters, not the generic marine.

Although you could go with your interpretation--even the space marines have fallen far from the initial values which created the Imperium in the first place. I've heard they were more human in the earlier editions, but I personally don't find that too interesting, even though there are chapters which demonstrate this very well.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They are the special forces of the Imperium, and a visable incarnation of the Emperor. And practically legend.

So much so that on many worlds, the average citizen may not actually believe that Space Marines are real. They are a story to get little children to behave.


This results in that, when trouble does arise and the Space Marines do show up, its enough to cow many worlds into submission.

A planet rebels for reasons not related to Chaos.

Then figures out of legend and the depths of time show up. Suddenly the Angels of Death that brought the Emperor's divine wrath to the enemies of the Imperium are there, and their guns are leveled at you.

Confronted by this, many rebellions are quelled with nary a shot fired. Its proof of the Emperor's will and all powerful might. He is no longer a figure in a stained glass window, he's very real.

Grey Templar puts it better than I ever could. If there is any (logical) reason to keep the SM around other than pure bureaucratic inertia it's this one.

They exist because they're the protagonists, and 40k isn't meant to be realistic.

 Vaktathi wrote:
We have all sorts of fluff that shows SM's recruit very slowly

Citation needed.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any sources detailing the rate of recruitment. The process of recruitment, the length of time spent in training, yes. But no hard numbers

if you've only got a million marines over a galaxy, they're not really seemingly going to be responding to conflicts much more than the Guard is, and thus their point as a "rapid reaction" force is moot.

Well, while 1,000,000 Marines is only a tiny fraction of the Imperiums soldiers, the Astartes naval forces comprise about 20% of the Imperiums entire naval strength. This lends a lot of credibility to their role as a reaction force.

Further, they are experienced and equipped to operate in a wide variety of environments. High or low gravity, toxic or no atmosphere, extreme temperatures, so on and so forth. This also makes it a lot easier for them to respond to any incident. While Guardsmen certainly could be equipped to operate in some of those environments, the extra time spent ensuring you send the right gear to the right regiment, then the right regiment to the right place is probably going to make your reaction force too late to be effective.